Output details

Edition of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Symphony no. 5

Vaughan Williams, as is widely known, was notorious for his difficult-to-read manuscripts. Among the works that caused particular problems was his 5th Symphony, for which the ‘fair copy’ prepared for the first performance contains many mistakes – in phrasing, articulation and occasionally the notes themselves. With this score (British Library Add. MS 50,372) forming the source for the edition published by OUP in 1946, these errors were perpetuated in print. While minor revisions were incorporated in a revised edition in 1969, no-one returned to the composer’s autograph until I made some preliminary investigations in the late 1990s. This subsequently led to an invitation to prepare a revised edition for issue in 2008, the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death. This is now the only edition available for performance from the publishers and has been recorded on the Dutton label.

While the preparation of the edition was a challenge, it also opened up further lines of enquiry, notably into the composer’s re-use of material from other works. The best-known concerns his ‘Morality’ The Pilgrim’s Progress (investigated by Michael Kennedy), but there are also thematic links with two movements written in 1938 for a pageant, England’s Pleasant Land. Scored for military band, they have remained unpublished (BL Add. MS 57,290). Enclosed is an edition prepared for the first modern performance in the UK, by the RCM Wind Orchestra, in October 2012, and since submitted to OUP for publication. Work on the symphony and pageant has convinced me that, contrary to Kennedy’s belief, the thematic ideas – among them the opening of the Preludio – were not extracted from the symphony to be ‘tried-out’ in the pageant, but conceived for the latter and then re-used and expanded in the symphony. A conference paper or article examining the pageant in more detail is planned.